


The Revolutionist

by jaygealousy



Category: Original Work
Genre: Drama, Drug Abuse, Drug Addiction, Drugs, F/M, Gen, Homosexuality, M/M, Magic Realism, Murder, Mystery, New York, Organized Crime, Psychological Drama, Russia, Sexual Content, Suspense, Trauma, Violence, transgressive fiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-05
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-10 11:54:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6984010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaygealousy/pseuds/jaygealousy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A New York mafia underboss's rebellious, drug-addicted son, his cynical and possibly hallucinating younger sister, a thoroughly corrupt New York governor, an emancipated young girl who may either be schizophrenic or a miracle-performing saint, and a genius Russian mobster turned revolutionary terrorist all have their lives intertwine when a gypsy woman dies under mysterious circumstances in Manhattan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

 

PROLOGUE

  


S E P T E M B E R  7,  2 0 0 1  


Y E K A T E R I N A

No one hears me scream. He's stolen my voice—all of our voices. I don't look anymore for the man who should be there to stop this one. He won't. Not for me. In weak bursts, I drag myself through mud knowing the rain silences my one witness: the earth. Treetops hide me from the moon, but birds watch, perched up above in needled branches. Broken fingers throb sharp and useless at my side. Footsteps follow, crunching twigs and wet leaves, moving slow. We both know I won't get past the river. Shreds of my nightgown—not my own, not my clothes, but a uniform—stick to my bleeding stomach with mud. The red trail from him to me seeps out from my belly—opened by his knife, opened five times. The earth scrapes my bare breasts and drinks my blood. By the riverbank, with a cracked branch, I write on my body. I cut through inked memories and stories about myself written into my skin in youth. As he stands over me now, I see it's not him but one of them. I dig down under this decorated surface to bones and soul. I carve in my own way, before he can. Blood is the only ink. Letter becomes my voice. The word on my tongue—blood in its taste, in its being—has no other way out. If my skin is all they will see, then let them read. I won't write for them but for her.

I won't leave her alone in this place.

 


	2. I: Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 5.27.2016: This is a partial chapter post. Updates coming soon.
> 
> 5.31.2016: Made a few edits and added a couple scenes. Still some things in rough draft form and a few more scenes to come soon.

CHAPTER I: DREAMS

“ _It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it._ ”

 _—_ George Carlin

 

“ _It was a dream! We live inside a dream!_ ”

 _—_ Fire, Walk With Me

 

 

 

S E P T E M B E R  8,  2 0 0 1        

R I K E R S  I S L A N D,  N Y  

 E  R  I  K

Endless white. The rippling ocean feels like sponge under my feet. Nothing for miles but the back of somebody way ahead of me. Some guy. Young, tall, light hair. Just like me. He stops when I stop, goes when I go. Every move, he copies me. A reflection. But if he was my mirror, he wouldn't take two steps for each of mine—walking across the water like that until he's lost in fog. Birds caw high above, piercing the air, but they're nowhere. Waves roar. The sea stretches on, vanishing into white.

“Count!”

I wake up to the warning buzz before the gates open. Above me, a thin, drooping mattress pad presses through the bars of a bunkbed in doughy strips. Yellow and red outlines of dried puddles stain the bottom like misshapen coffee rings. Big and small, urine and blood. Next cell over, the COs got random searches going. They're rattling bars, upturning beds, stripping guys down, shouting, “Count!”

On my chest, Crime and Punishment splays open at the part where Zossimov and Razumikhin argue over the painter. Underlined in wavy pencil that crosses through neighboring text is the line: _It's their sickening rotten, petrified routine..._

When I roll over, Billy's there by the sink staring at me with his shirt slung over his shoulder, same as every morning. He's got his arms crossed, eyes veiny red and wide. His frayed toothbrush sticks out of a white-knuckled fist.

“The fuck is that?” he asks.

I dog ear the page, thumbing at the peeling Used sticker on the spine. “You never seen a book?” I say. I set it on the floor. Hard to part with the comforting, musty smell of old, tanned pages. Wood pulp decaying. The concrete floor's all stained. Maybe from the toilet. On second thought, I pick it up again. Kids in here are wild. Two cells over, the guys there been treating it like solitary—flooding the hall with the toilet, writing on the walls with shit and blood. Doesn't matter. My clothes are folded on top of the desk, ready to be packed.

Billy's snaggletooth peeks out under his sneer. “What'd you say?” he asks. We're paisans—him black Irish—but it doesn't matter. Rikers hasn't exactly been like the cliches. None of Dad or Uncle Tony's stories about being inside really applied here. In RNDC, it's all street gangs. You don't just show up and find your kind. You conform, get initiated, wear the uniform, follow the rules. So I said fuck the four other dagos in here with me acting like they're the mob. I know your mom, Andreozzi. I'm not bending a fuckin' knee 'cause you've been here two weeks longer. Take a hike.

“Fyodor Dostoevsky.” I'm giving it the Russian pronunciation before I can catch myself.

“Fuckin' Nazi faggot.”

It's like bubbles—carbonation in my chest needing to burn its way out. “Commie,” I correct, tossing the book onto the bed. “I think you mean Commie faggot.”

His face sours. “So you're a faggot,” he says with a shrug. “The fuck you always reading for, Commie faggot?”

A Bill Hicks joke comes into my head, but Jones hops down from the top bunk before it goes any further than that and says, “Shut the hell up, Billy. Nobody wanna hear that shit. Five in the morning.”

“Count!” One of the COs screams again.

Even as I'm pulling on my clothes, Billy keeps staring at me, snarling silent anger in short, staccato breaths. It's all who you know, your tone of voice, the look you gave that guy two seconds ago. You don't get to step back and say, hey guys, my last name ends in a vowel—I'm out. Sink or grab onto a gang and float until somebody pops your lifesaver with something sharp. You wanna try to swim, you hold your head high, keep your nose down, keep looking forward, but you don't lock eyes with nobody unless you want them gouged outta your head. Definitely don't smile.

I got a huge smile on my face.

“You like to fuckin' read?” he keeps saying like it's some kinda taunt, not blinking, not moving from his perch by the sink. “You like to read?”

“Illiterate cracker motherfucker,” Jones mutters.

I put up my hands, begging for somebody to make sense of this bullshit. We all dress and amble sleepily out of the cell to fill the gap in the line of guys. Officer Murphy rips beds apart, taking out contraband, while miss fuckin' priss—burly officer Carter—calls out prisoner numbers and names.

So you got the gangs, you got guys like me, you got guys like Jones—who isn't a Crip or a Blood or a Trinitario, and probably hasn't ever broken a law in his life; he just got accused of stealing from some white kid at school so now he's gotta wait for his trial with these animals. And then you got the guys who are just a bit mental, like Billy.

Even with the COs a few feet away, Billy harps on the same line. “You like to read, faggot?”

“Your mother never teach you the alphabet or somethin'?” I look past him to Jones, who's standing with his eyes closed, slowly rocking back and forth on his feet, sailing back into dreams.

“You like to read?”

“We've already established I do, Billy,” I'm yelling now. “What is this—the Spanish Inquisition?”

In some surreal, cosmic joke, the last thing I hear is Jones yawn and jokingly say, “Nobody expects that shit.” It happens too fast. The white hot explosions in my eyes come outta nowhere. There's a lot of shouting before the blaring emergency alarm croaks on like a demonic toad. I see a rainfall of blood at my feet way before I feel the sting. My neck and chest are wet and my heartbeat is in my right cheek. Officer Carter has Billy down on the bloodied gray linoleum with hands behind his back. Billy yells that he's not resisting, but she beats on his skull with her club anyway, grunting at me, “You always gotta be a smartass, Nordivino.” Officer Murphy's alternately screaming at his radio for back-up and at me to hold onto my face and keep applying pressure. In the growing pools at my feet, there's a toothbrush with a cracked, plastic handle whittled into a shank.

 

  
 

 

M A N H A T T A N,  N Y  

D  R  I  T  A

The sun rises, the radio plays, the summer heat's ending, and we're finally driving down I-278 E in dad's Cadillac on our way to pick up my big brother from prison. I still mostly feel excited even though mom won't stop crying. It's hard not to laugh when the Botox keeps her face from moving, but if I do she'll go on again about my cold heathen heart and how I need to get confirmed in the church because real girls, Catholic girls, they don't roundhouse other girls for being catty. Her perfume and dad's cigar smoke clash in the air as they argue about how dad waited two months to post bail to teach Erik a lesson. The sun's a little fireball peeking out between buildings, warming my skin, burning up the clouds above red hot and gold. I peel my thighs from the leather seats and curl up against the window. If I sit just right and press my forehead to the cool glass, all there is in the world are the Manhattan sunrise and bits of green grass between all these long shadows from crowded headstones marking like a billion dead dudes in the Calvary cemeteries. I wonder how many different places they were all from, how many countries, how many languages are in the dirt there. What would it sound like if they all jumped up and started singing different national anthems at once? The sun disappears behind a Coca-Cola billboard when we get stuck behind backed up traffic, leaving the car cold.

Dad says Rikers isn't prison, it's jail, but I don't get what the difference is. Erik's been gone and I'm stuck with them. Not after today. All of it seems connected in some way that I can't name, in an airy, divine feeling there's no words for. A moment that stands out in time for no reason, connected by no nameable thing, just goosebumps and a universe pregnant with magic. Our brains are on standby mode, going through the motions to live, and then they're suddenly wired alive in the moment by a song on the radio, gold and purple in the rising sun, and the prospect of arriving at Rikers to see your big brother again. I feel how I did waiting for him to come back at the end of the summer when I was nine years old and he'd gone away to Florida to live with aunt Eva. The summer when I realized I was me and not him—I could only ever be me, and it was all stuck that way. The summer when mom and dad's arguments never stopped. The summer when we moved out of the projects. The summer I first started seeing Kay.

We weren't allowed to talk about Erik because dad would get quiet and stare across the dinner table, breathing hard and glaring out like a monster from under the bed as he twirled pasta onto his fork, while mom kept her silence with a long gulp of red wine. He'd yell, “That name isn't said in this house!” She'd put her cigarette out in his plate and take her lipstick-printed glass with her into the next room, leaving me stuck there with him, pushing my food around 'til I was excused from the table.

Erik was gone before school was even over. I'd bring it up to family, neighbors, animals. My big brother was away in Florida but he'd be coming home when school started again, I'd say, riding my bike alongside Mr. Sylvester around the cul-de-sac, talking at him as he walked Bugsy, the wheezing, hundred year old pug choking himself on the end of the leash to nip at my tires. I'd talk and talk all about my brother who's good at everything he tries, all about how we'd just moved in and this neighborhood was like Disneyland compared to our old one, about how my brother would definitely help me beat up Shannon Porcelli who got all of the kids in first period to start calling me psycho girl and barking at me like dogs whenever I walked past them in the halls.

I'd give names to birds and squirrels and tell them how I was worried that he wouldn't know what house to go to when he got back to New York. I'd ambush Mrs. Peressini in her robe and wild bedhead running to get the morning paper and ask if she'd ever been to Florida, about what it was like. Was it really ninety degrees all the time and full of sharks and alligators and old people? Do sharks and alligators like to eat old people? Do the police have special boats to go after them? Would they ever eat somebody younger, like, say, fourteen? I'd ask mom and dad every day, sometimes twice a day: When is Erik coming home? Dad and uncle Giuls would say I was a chatterbox, that our family didn't need any chatterboxes, and I should know better. But dad was the one who sent him away and Giuls isn't my fucking uncle.

When we start moving again, dad's Montecristo No. 2 smoke blows out his window and comes back through the crack in mine. “Everything I do,” he shouts, “I do for this family.” That's what he says when he doesn't really have an explanation for why he did whatever he did. “He fucked up. Outta my house. Kid needs to learn there's consequences.”

“You want it to stay your house, you let him back in.” Mom breaks from digging for Clonazepam and lipliner in her Gucci bag so she can bless herself as we pass Corpus Christi Church.

Dad laughs. He's a monster and so I'm a monster. She says I love him more than I love her, that Erik is the only one who cares about her. It's a bunch of bullshit. Dad doesn't tell me I should skip sitting down to dinner so some middle school bitches stop harassing me for not weighing less than a hundred pounds. Dad doesn't tell me to make him martinis and then stand out in front of the house at one in the morning crying and screaming at grandpa over the phone like a lunatic because his children ruined his life and he gave up everything for them. Either way, Erik loves me more than either of them.

We merge off the highway. My seatbelt cuts into my shoulder at a yellow light dad can't quite beat. “You let him back in, guarantee you,” He says, “he won't set foot over the threshold. Fuckin' backwards kid does the opposite of whatever he's supposed to. He's kicked out, you'll see him all the goddamn time, and we can use that room for something useful. Wasted space for a bed he doesn't even sleep in.”

“Maybe he'd feel safe enough to sleep in his bed if you weren't constantly drinking your bitter, gross dark beer all night and picking fights with him like a fuckin' mick.” Somehow, mom sees me cringe and that's worse than dad wanting to kick Erik out. “Oh, what! They're white now! Irish and Italians are white now—right? I can say that. This one. She thinks she knows everything.”

In a moment, the sunrise is gone—the pretty lakes, the skyline. Just dull blue. Everything turns into dirty old brick buildings. Gas stations and check cashing stores. There's hundreds of black birds sitting on ropes of wire strung across poles, looking down at us like some stupid beginning of a horror movie. We're not in Staten Island anymore, and I feel how I did going to bed that night I knew he was on a late flight home.

“You and your vodka from noon 'til next morning.” Dad says. “No—I'm the asshole for a couple beers with dinner.”

“Your father's part Irish.” Mom says, like that makes it better. “The Italians have been persecuted since we got here. You tell your hippie liberal teachers that? You mention that when you complain how racist your mother is?” She isn't even making sense.

“Picking fights.” Dad shakes his head. “I pick fuckin' fights? I pick fights with that kid? You tellin' me that's why there's no peace in this house?”

I hang my head down and try blocking them out with my knees against my ears.

Mom throws a dismissive hand at the air. “You instigate with him!”

When Erik came into my room and woke me and Kay up in the middle of the night to ask why I had a black eye, I buried my face in his chest and held on for life. I wouldn't let go, even when he stood up and it pulled me out from bed. In the morning, he told our parents we were riding our bikes to school. We skipped class so he could teach me how to fight. Kay was mad I left her behind, or I guess that's what I pretended.

He showed me how to stand, slightly bent, strong foot forward. How to block my face and body with my arms. How to throw a punch. He let me try it on him. “As hard as you can.” I was afraid I'd hurt him. When I realized I couldn't, I stopped holding back—hit as hard as I could. He said it was good but it wasn't. I could barely reach his chest. I kicked my bike over. The basket snapped off the front of it when it hit the pavement. Tear-streaked and red, I asked him what good any of it was. “She's way bigger than me.” He just laughed and said, “Everybody's bigger than you,” and that I would never grow past five feet. There was a cigarette tucked behind his ear even then, and I remember him the same way he is now even though he would've only been fourteen.

He fixed the basket and told me how I could go for the stomach or the throat or the groin (even on girls), how I could drop someone by kicking them in the back of the knee, how I could hit with my elbows, how grabbing hair, biting skin, jabbing eyes, and pulling ears all helped convince someone they probably don't wanna fight you. He told me about the alligator in aunt Eva and uncle Joey's garage and the youth pastor that tried “bein'a pervert” with him, and how sometimes you had to fight dirty, “Especially when you're a fuckin' hobbit,” and how I shouldn't listen to mom or dad because “They're both full of shit.” Most important of all, he told me if I wanted other kids to stop picking on me, I should stop talking to Kay.

It's the end of the city. Four-way stop at 19th and Hazen. The big sign ahead has two American flags on it—one red and blue, the other gray. City of New York Correction Department. Rikers Island. Home of New York's Boldest. Is that a joke?

Mom mutters, “He said he's in the Davoren Complex.”

We snuck out again that night. For no real reason, he crept into my room past midnight and woke me up. Somehow he'd gotten dad's car keys. He didn't say where we were going but it didn't matter to me. I was drunk with thrill. Giddy to be included. Every step we took, the house groaned like dad had enchanted the wood to tattle on us—to swell and squeak like an alarm. Even my breathing sounded loud. Instead of trying my hardest to be quiet, I reported it to Erik.

“Hold your breath, then.” He whispered. “If you hold your breath, they won't hear you.” And I'd shut up because I wouldn't be able to talk.

Except instead, I asked him, “How long can you hold your breath for? A minute? Two minutes?” Pausing thoughtfully as we descended the stairs, and then, down by the front door, “What's the longest a person has ever held their breath?”

I can still see him cracking open the front door, moonlight from the windows lighting a halo around his hair, holding up a finger ringed with dad's keys, revolver keychain dangling in his palm, going, “Shh.”

Out in the driveway—lower, imitating a whisper but not quite whispering, “Could you die if you hold your breath too long or would you just have to start breathing?”

“You'd pass out.”

“Would you keep holding your breath after that or would you start breathing? I wonder if passing out is like sleeping or if it's different. Do people have dreams when they're passed out?”

He sighed loud, holding the car door open, throwing his head back and pushing out his breath like a great, aggravated labor, but he answered me anyway. “Passing out is like going to sleep involuntarily.”

Involuntarily, I repeated in my head—or probably outloud—liking the sound of this new word, especially the V and the L. A long word. An Erik word. Involuntarily. “Can you do other stuff involuntarily too? Can you wake up involuntarily? Or, nevermind. That's not a good one. Can you... Can you talk involuntarily?”

“That's what you're doin' now, isn't it?”

When the light turns green, I hold my breath. We pass a parking lot along the right and drive through a checkpoint to the start of the bridge. Within seconds, the wild trees and greenery on a stretch of island to the right disappear in a sharp point. Then it's just water and traces of the distant city. The LaGuardia Airport off in the mist. I watch the world shrink in the rear windshield. Ahead, the odd spaced streetlights—one on the left, then one on the right—are still on, shining orange in the dusk. Each one we pass is a little pinprick in my heart, whipping it on faster, bringing us closer to distant fences topped with rings of wire. Wire, gates, chain link fences. Concrete, steel, and gray water.

We near a parking lot and slow down, crawling past tall fences everywhere. At another white brick checkpoint, dad exchanges some words with a guard at the booth who waves us in. I don't hear any of it. Blood drums in my ears.

When I do finally breathe in, mom is saying, “The Davoren Complex,” as she looks around for signs that read the same.

“He's not in the Davoren Complex.” Dad says.

“What're you talkin' about? He's been there for two months.”

“He's not there.”

Mom makes a sour face and zips her makeup bag back inside her purse. “That's where he said he was.”

We keep rolling past stretches of green grass and short, round trees on either side of the road edging a massive length of parking lots. “He's in booking! They keep 'em in the bullpen before they go—why would he still be in RNDC?” Tall, electrified mesh fences blur the red brick buildings beyond them. Their curly tops of looped razorwire look like one big, infinite slinky, at least until I spot a dead pigeon caught inside a sharp loop, hanging by its feet with its wings splayed out like an upside down crucifix.

Mom asks, defeated, “Well, where do we pick him up?”

“What'd I just say?”

“Bullpen! What the fuck is a bullpen!”

“He's not in the bullpen—he was probably in the bullpen _last night_.” His voice goes higher at the end, almost yelling. “He's in booking now.” By the time we pull into a parking lot, my stomach is in gurgling knots.

“Where the fuck do we pick him up?” She's screaming now.

“He's in fuckin' booking!”

By the time we park, mom's dabbing the rims of her eyes with a tissue, trying not to smudge her mascara. “I can't go in there.” She sobs, thumbing away a tear, careful to keep her eyeliner in place.

Dad leaves the keys in the ignition. He sighs before he unbuckles his seatbelt. “Drita, you comin'?”

My limbs have gone all noodly and I think I'm going to throw up. My face is cold and sweaty. I can't move. At least not until mom says, “Of course she is. She wouldn't want to be stuck anywhere with her awful mother for five minutes.”

I throw off my seatbelt, if that's even possible, and slam the car door behind me. Once we're dizzyingly close to the door, dad puts his arm around my back to pull me in for a scratchy, stubbled kiss on my forehead. His cigars and cologne bring back early schoolday mornings—memories of him putting on cufflinks, folding up the screechy ironing board, with his smoker's cough and sandpaper face, mercilessly rubbing his stubble against my neck and face before he shaved until I couldn't stop giggling. Steaming coffee in one hand and car keys in the other, and then out the door for work. “She just misses your brother. Alright?” Code for, please don't be emotionally scarred by our terrible parenting.

“Yeah.” I reluctantly agree. He messes my hair like I'm still nine or something and chuckles to himself when I try to comb it straight again with my fingers.

Inside, he knows exactly where to go. It's all buzzing fluorescents and brick walls painted half and half with a goopy, glossy white on top and dull prison blue on bottom. He knows the name of the man at the front desk—Lionel—who makes me take off my boots and my silver hoop earrings when I set the metal detector off. Beside his coffee mug, there's a tall, pink orchid in a stubby white pot. The archway beeps again—probably because of my belt—but dad's talking to him, saying, “Lionel the lion! You stopping by my barbecue this weekend? You gotta come by!” Lionel kinda just laughs and waves us through like he's forgotten what he's doing, nodding vigorously, stuttering, “I can't, Mr. Nordivino. It's a pleasure, Mr. Nordivino. Always a pleasure. I—I just can't.”

I have to stand there by the desk and wait for him to realize he hasn't given back my earrings. When he does, he jostles the plant with his elbow reaching them back to me, and then he just keeps saying, “Always a pleasure.” There's yellow stains on his fingers and one of his nails is a crusty brown. I pocket the earrings and sprint away to catch up with dad.

Halfway down the hall, I say, “That guy's weird.”

Dad smiles but he doesn't say anything back. I don't know why he looks tired to me. Maybe because he hasn't shaved. Maybe it's the shadow of black, scraggly hairs poking through, or maybe the shadows under his eyes. When he tells me, “You know I love your brother. Right?” I'm dumbfounded. “He just...” He shakes his head.

Probably, I should say something back, but I can't think. At the end of the hall, there's some guy sitting on a bench, cuffed and tethered to it by a skinny chain. He's staring at me with his hands together like he's praying. The way his eyes move up and down, it gets hard to breathe and I can't keep my head up anymore. We have to pass him turning the corner.

When he calls out, “How you doin'?” dad snaps awake.

Everything's quiet enough to hear our footsteps and whispered conversations from up ahead before he screams, “She's thirteen!” His voice reverberates through the whole building. Booming sonic waves. “I'll make her a fuckin' leather purse for her pennies outta your balls, one more syllable comes out your mouth.”

The rest of the way, I can't look up from the floor. At some point, Dad puts his jacket over my shoulders. I don't know where we go—just that when I do look up, only about half of Erik's face is in front of me.

A large square of gauze covers up his left cheek. There's a browned lightning bolt of blood stained across the cotton. My throat clamps shut like a vice. One second I'm thinking I don't know if I should hug him or not, and then his arms are around me and I'm burying my face in his shirt, crying.

I hear dad laugh. “Jesus—How's the other guy look? You try and be a big shot with the wrong people?”

When I lift my head, there's wet prints of my nose and eyes left behind on Erik's chest.

There's chaos coming. I see it from underneath, gazing up at the angry sky in his eyes brewing trouble. “No.” He says finally, like a slap. He hasn't shaved either but it doesn't show as much. His hair's so much lighter, like mom's when she hasn't bleached it.

“Alright, alright. Save some for your autobiography.” Dad sarcastically stops him. “Now you see what happens when you're all piss and vinegar all the time. You gotta show respect.”

Sniffling, I fiddle with the zipper on dad's jacket. Now and then, I steal glances at them squaring off—Erik with his head defiantly high, and dad holding his smile, not budging an inch.

Then Erik says, “Like you at Tony's card game.”

Watching dad's face change is like seeing the red brake lights before a ten car pile up. The silence that hits is the torrential downpour in the moments before a hurricane shreds your back garden, rips the patio door off its hinges, and the wall it came out of bursts to splinters. I don't understand why he does this. If he just enjoys defiantly building up grand cathedral sand castles at the shoreline even though a wave hits every time, if it's some kind of compulsion he can't help. If he has to do the opposite of whatever would make life easy, like dad says.

Instead of the expected flesh-melting nuclear explosion of curse words, dad just smiles. But he does grab Erik's face and press his thumb onto the gauze—presses down until Erik's turning away. I inch forward, faltering my first step. “That fuckin' attitude is why you wouldn't last another week in here.” He says, laughing a little.

All downhill from here.

Erik stays there holding dad's gaze. “You said that two months ago.”

I wipe my eyes. “Can we just go?” I ask, but they're not listening.

“You're not looking so hot, kid.” Dad pats Erik's cheek and laughs, letting his hands drop to his sides and then find their triumphant way to his waist. “Another week, you'll be missing more than some skin off your cheek.”

“You wanna bet?” The gauze on Erik's face spots bright red. A taped corner peels, bending up.

Footsteps come in clacking echoes from down the hall. My heart pounds and everything inside me screams _run the fuck away,_ but I step in the middle, looking up at dad. “Mom's waiting.” I say, trying my best to not sound like I'm nagging or whining.

“Bet.” Dad savors the word. “Bet what? Bet money? Before you go losing bets and robbing more empty trucks with your weird friends, your bail was twenty large. A quarter's coming outta your envelopes until it's paid, so you and Joey Bag O' Donuts better get back to it slingin' crack at the playgrounds and knocking little Suzy down for her lunch money.”

A short, dark-skinned police officer rounds the corner and nods hello to us. Dad nods back. As the officer walks by, dad turns away, looking up at the ceiling, shaking his head.

Out in the parking lot, it doesn't get much better. The overcast sky lights up with a crack of thunder. Dark drops of drizzled rain speckle the asphalt ground. Erik's way ahead of us—out the door before we get past Lionel. Across the lot, soaring blackbirds and the squat, austere building reflect in the Cadillac's windows. Mom's already sobbing before we even get in the car. Without a word, Erik strides around to the passenger side and ducks into the seat behind her. I catch her screaming, “Oh my God!” over blasting talk radio before the door slams. When I get in, she's crying, “Oh my God! My baby! What happened to your face?”

Erik doesn't say anything. He just stares out the window while dad piles into the driver's seat. Before dad even closes his door, he twists the volume dial down, dampening the calm, alien voices reporting events from a world somewhere far away from here.

“He pleads the fifth.” Dad says.

_Governor Morton and brother Jack Morton of Morton Industries have called a press conference in Albany at 2PM today to address the corporation's tragic fracking disaster that left four dead yesterday morning after—_

He shuts it off.

“What happened to his face?” Mom keeps crying. Her stiff expression leaks tear as she leans over the center console to the backseat, reaching her hand out. Erik doesn't even look over.

“It got cut!” Dad shouts back, lighting one of his Marlboro's now. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—your _whining!_ Let the kid have some peace for a minute. Been in holding all day.”

“What happened to his face!”

“Why d'you think he ends up here? You coddle him.” The engine revs and we peel out of the parking lot, zooming off to the bridge checkpoint, slowing only to wait for the orange and white striped arm to go up. Dad gestures furiously as he shouts to no one and everyone. “Should've just let them bus him to Queens Plaza, take the train home. Two dollars a fuckin' gallon. We already pay taxes for the goddamn tickets they give 'em free.”

I shrink out of sight below the window as dad waves in thanks to the rain-jacketed officer at the kiosk and mom starts to lose her shit. “He ends up here... because I coddle him?” She repeats, giving the thunder a run for its money. “That's why?”

We speed away and dad feeds a CD into the stereo. “Where do you think he gets the attitude?” He says.

Erik sighs, squirming in his seat a bit as Billy Joel blares on. “I would've taken the train.” He says. “You guys said you wanted to pick me up.”

“See?” Dad points with his whole hand like there's something there on the dashboard. “He would've taken the train.” Before I know it, we're off the island, speeding down the skinny bridge while dad gradually turns the music up, glancing at mom with every increment of volume to see if she cares.

Mom's face is in her hands. “He doesn't mean it. You're making him feel guilty.”

“Guilty—Christ almighty.”

“You let him sit in Rikers, some boy mutilates his face—”

“He just said he'd take the train! Where do you get guilty?”

“—now you're bitchin' about _gas money!_ ”

“But don't come bitchin' to me... Had to be a big shot, didn'cha,” Dad sings over her, playing the steering wheel like a drum set, laughs to himself, choosing to not participate in reality anymore, “had to open up your mouth...”

The glow from the streetlights turns to a dewey orange in the raindrops on the windows. For the rest of the way down the bridge, mom cries while dad ignores her. At least until Uptown Girl comes on. Then he reaches over, takes the hand she's trying to cry into, and starts serenading her. When she ignores him, he pulls her limp wrist to the steering wheel so he can kiss up her arm like Gomez Addams.

“C'mon, uptown girl. C'mon, twiggy. We're all together again.” That's all it takes—reminding her she's thin. She wipes her eyes and gives him this vulnerable look that makes me wanna gag. “Just stop stressing about everything—every little cut and bruise. She'll see I'm not so tough... Just because I'm in love! With an uptown girl!”

I watch Erik, his head on backwards, looking through the rear window at the island like he'd rather go back. He hasn't said a word to me. This sinking feeling of betrayal punches me in the gut. This feeling that he's becoming less like Erik and more like mom and dad.

 

 

 

 _when the shark bites with his teeth, dear_  
_scarlet billows start to spread_  
_fancy gloves though wears MacHeath, dear_  
_so there's not a trace of red_

 

A L B A N Y,  N Y  

F  R  A  N  K

Had Frank woken up in his own bed with that sprawling view of the East River instead of two and a half hours north of his Upper East Side apartment, he might have gotten dressed before the three-panel ebony framed mirror in his black marble bathroom and noticed a fleck of blood just around the back of his collar. Not even Fanny notices it, engaged as she is in providing a space on her back for Frank to drape out his options for ties. Nevertheless, once he pulls on his Gianni Versace jacket, the coagulated dot is covered snug under the pinstripe collar. Obviously, he's not going to walk into a journalist crossfire in anything but a perfectly tailored statement, no matter how much Jack warns him it'll seem like gloating.

Even at the project's conception, there were dozens of warning signs that it should have been abandoned. At least, that's what he's able to discern that his chief of staff, Jack's director of communications, and some guy—some sort of intern—have been trying to tell him. It's conceivable that Jack's girl wouldn't have been allowed in the room at all had Jack not insisted on it. Red hair, the middle button missing off her blouse, and a small gap in her front teeth. In a sense, Frank has always found women distracting. Even at the end of last year, she says, the failing grade safety reports, the workers' growing medical problems, the complaints from locals about off-color tap water—they were all pouring in. This is bad news, she says. There's a long paper trail. Lipstick on her teeth. Just a smidge.

The intern—Arnold?—rattles off a bunch of math. Nonsensical percentages, equations, numbers with no clear connections to the topic at hand. He's like a cartoon statistician. No, not Arnold. Arnold's the Asian one. Arnold the Asian. This man has those parallel lines down his face—deep, vertical valleys. Lines like old wounds. They set Frank's teeth on edge. Sliced, symmetrical scars. At Frank's left, the curve of the communications director's chest shows faintly through this ill-fitted blouse that otherwise hangs off her like a man. Trousers, she has on. Trousers. If the room were a little less hostile, Frank might have found the focus to remember the intern's name. Maybe it starts with an S or something. The mnemonic devices Linda gives him rarely seem to help much.

Frank sighs as he lays out a red paisley tie beside the diamond burgundy one on Fanny's hunched shoulders. The sweat beads at his hairline now. “Who is he?” He asks, pointing to the intern who is almost certainly not named Arnold.

Not Arnold falters mid-sentence. “What?” As the nameless intern catches glimpse of himself behind Frank in the mirror—small and short, suit sleeves a little too long, like a child who can't fill his father's clothes—all the gusto in his well-rehearsed report thins to a meek whine. A little chirp begging recognition.

To the great fortune of everyone in the room, Frank stops himself before he wipes the sweat, bronzer, and powder foundation from his brow with the back of his Gianni Versace coat sleeve. “I mean, God—can I get some air in here?” He yells. “What is it, eighty?” If Frank's chief of staff, Ernst—not a tall man, not a noble man, but a practical man and a quick thinker—if Ernst hadn't the experience to know that the intern definitely not named Arnold was encroaching on Frank's very much needed five foot bubble of personal space, if he hadn't the foresight to grab not-Arnold's arm and reel him back outside the bubble, Frank may not have simply shaken off the room's intolerable heat.

Fanny, looking like a rotten egg—in shape and color—turns her head far enough over the hunch of her back for the man not named Arnold to get a glimpse of her milk white eye blindly judging him under thick bottle glasses. “Harold.” She wheezes, rolling a hard Germanic R. Her eyes pass over Harold, leaving him with a feeling as though death itself has now seen him and called out his name in a cold, clammy rasp. “Harold with the harrowing lines. You were finding the lines harrowing.”

Frank lets out a eureka sigh of, “Ah!” He inspects the red tie, holding it to the side of his face in the mirror, trying quite hard to keep his gaze from the communications director's awful blouse and lipsticked gap-teeth. “And 'harrowing' was again...?”

“Distressing.” Fanny says, panting from the great, invisible effort to keep her back a steady spot for Frank's use. “You were finding the face lines distressing, and Linda gives you the Harold the harrowing to remember.”

It's conceivable that, in that moment, nothing other than what exactly happened may have seized Frank's attention, forcing his eyes to leave his reflection for elsewhere. From the room's east wing comes a light, tinny sound. The tapping of a bird's beak on glass. He watches the window and waits. When nothing happens, he says, “Not Arnold.” In the mirror, such piercing blue eyes. The dark, cold tones of his suit draw them out. Then, bent over before him, there's Fanny. The lumpy, wormy white flesh hangs off her arms in drooping bags of blue veins—a sight enough to nearly bring him to take his jacket off just to drape it over her. “Arnold was... the Asian?” He asks.

“Ja, natürlich,” she says, “Arnold the Asian. Harold the harrowing.”

“No, I don't like it. Too close to Arnold. No. I mean, _harrowing_... When do I say harrowing? What even is harrowing? Maybe Larry or something. Lines, Larry.”

Harold, one third-person remark away from speechlessness, begins to stutter. “W-what?”

“Lance.” Fanny suggests.

“Horatio!” Frank bellows over his shoulder, “Open a fucking window! What'd you say? Lance? What kind of a name...”

“Lance Henrisken.” Fanny nods. “He has the lines. Lance with the lines.”

It's all a little too much for Frank. The girl, in here, looking like that. The intern. Not in this heat. “Horatio!”

“He waits in the car, Frank.” Fanny says, gently. “He is not in the room.”

Sensing Harold's growing discomfort, Ernst deftly improvises, “Henrisken!” He points to Harold's face. “Henriksen, with an H, like Harold.”

Frank winces and shakes his head as though tasting something sour. “It's so... convoluted.”

“W-what?” Harold stutters.

“I'm going to call you Lance, Arnie.” Frank says. “It's easier for everyone.”

“Harold.” Harold says as his stomach plummets to the earth's core.

Fanny nods, wringing her veiny, white hands. Another crimson tie drapes down over her back. “Arnold the Asian, Harold the harrowing.”

“Would a red tie make me look more red or the other way round? And I mean—what are you even, like, bringing to the room, Lance? The top one percent of the bottom ten percent of the minority of blah, blah, blah. I don't need _numbers,_ ” Frank laughs, “to know that flesh melts in a gas explosion.”

“Red bleeds on camera.” Says the communications director. Her pink tongue presses into the gap of her stained teeth from behind as her lips part to deliver the word _bleeds_. Frank shuts his eyes. “You'll look flushed.” The words fly off her breath, feathery, yet far too strong.

“Horatio!” Frank screams over his shoulder, unknotting a ruby red tie from his neck. “Open a fucking window!”

By the time Fanny has explained to Frank yet again that Horatio is not there but rather outside waiting in the car, Ernst has already made a lap around the room, unlatching and lifting each gold-paneled window. A breeze whisks in from the east—a ghost dancing with the sheer, ruffled curtains. By the time Frank has mopped his brow with his Gianni Versace coat sleeve and indubitably stained it with bronzer, Ernst has taken to pushing everyone but Fanny out the hotel door, crying, “Out! Everyone out! The governor needs his rest!”

What made the heat so difficult in that moment was not necessarily a lack of air circulation, as Frank soon discovered out on the hotel balcony, staring over the veranda, where dots of women in brightly colored sun dresses crawl out of the hotel lobby like ants from a hill. For some reason, Frank's agitation grew, even as Fanny climbed onto a deck chair to swab his forehead with fistfuls of napkins embossed with seashells, gently reassuring, “I have packed also the Brooks Brothers.”

Frank, accepting no salve for the simmering burn of his frustration, grips the balcony bannister tight and asks, “What's my schedule?”

“At noon you are to meet with Jack.” Fanny says. “At 2 is the press conferences. At 3 is the flight. At 5:30 you are to be in Staten Island. You meet with the Mr. Aceto.”

Frank swipes at the spot on his arm, then straightens his jacket. “Tell Horatio to bring the car around.”

 

 

 

 

M A N H A T T A N,  N Y  

G  A  B  R  I  E  L  E

The clock is the loudest thing in the hospital. Steady and eternal. Tick, tick, tick, tick. By the time it hits a quarter past ten, I've told her everything I can think of about my mother, my father, my childhood. There's nothing else to say but Claudia is still sitting there with her clipboard, asking, “Why are you afraid of having an eating disorder, Gabriele?”

The sun steals through the bars and slotted blinds. Criss-cross shadows cut squares across the sterile, off-white hospital floor. Fuming in from the floor vents, clouds of red smoke thicken around Claudia's ankles. They grow like horse-trod desert dust, permeating the air, lighting up particle flares in the checkered sunlight. Her round glasses hover too high over these scoops of sleep deprivation under her eyes. They belong together. An itch runs through my hand to push them into her face—to sheath them into those open slots. I crack my knuckles instead and fan through the pages of Galápagos as she pokes her doughy knob of a chin with her pen and jots down some note or other on my non-compliance. The page count becomes a little flipbook animation into the future, the years counting up and up to the extinction of humans and their Big Brains.

“You know, if we went extinct and there were no more radio or communication towers running,” I say, “bird populations would boom. In about a hundred years, the world would be ruled by feral cats.”

Her face doesn't change. I fidget with a peeling, two-ply corner of the cover, unsure of why I'm even trying. The clouds of red rise to her infertile, beachball stomach. “That was your father's book, you said.” More notes scrawl bleeding from her pen.

I've never been so bored. “My mom has boxes of them. He leaves all these notes in the margins, but...” I crack it open at my bookmark and show all the penciled notes to her. Skinny, cursive Cyrillic. “Kinda hard to make out.”

My 24-hour adjustment period is up. You have to attend the group sessions after that. Two so far today. Two of three. They say it's up to you, but they make you go. You're uncooperative if you don't do it. Not serious about your recovery. Unless you go to check-in group and circle the cartoon face on the one-to-ten scale that best represents how you feel, you can't be committed to getting better.

She reaches for my hand with an exaggerated bedside manner—a mask to hide that she's faking it, that she's forcing herself to feel for people. Everyone in the hospital can tell. The black hole, gaping and sucking from the center of her chest. Maybe I'm the only that sees it, but they all feel it. A draining force of nature with the pitch dark of a solar eclipse everytime she walks in the room. It must be difficult. To be so fascinated with the human mind from the distance of a textbook, and then find that you don't have the personality for your vocation. “Is it because of the stigma?” She asks, waiting for her projected insight to bait a confession—an emotional breakthrough.

I yawn. The pull gets stronger the closer she is. Draining. I'm not really sure how long to hold her hand for. The crook of my arm is still tender—I've had my blood drawn three times since I've been here—and this angle kind of hurts. I want to get up and sit somewhere else, but the bed is my only option really with her in the desk chair. Through the barred windows, I can see the 11 o'clock group session in the garden outside writing out lists of things that are calming to the senses. It looks warm and sunny, but my wristband is red, not green. It'll be another couple days before they take me off suicide watch.

“I just don't understand...” I begin, “why you're convinced that I'm lying, that my doctor, my therapist, my psychiatrist are all lying. It's kind of... insulting.” She lets go of my hand. Tick. Tick. Tick. The bandages on my wrists itch. “A little arrogant.” I say in afterthought.

“You said you bought Ensure.” She says. “You're too poor to buy groceries, but you can afford expensive protein shakes. You don't have an eating disorder, but you know about meal substitution shakes.”

“Who even—who doesn't know what a protein shake is?” Coming off Zoloft keeps making my heart race. Either that or the upped Clonazepam. “I bought a store knockoff of Ensure because I was too sick to eat.”

She taps the end of her pen against the clipboard. “You weigh 79 pounds.” She says.

“You're not allowed to diagnose eating disorders on weight alone.” I've been trying to be nice but I don't want to talk to her anymore. “I mean, in theory, if I'm trying to lose weight, if I don't want to get caught, why would I go to a doctor I don't know and ask about getting my weight back up?”

“Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. What bothers you about that diagnosis?”

She's annoying. Depressing. The old crow of a woman three rooms down feels it too. She's screaming. Kicking her small plastic garbage can down the hall like a game of kick-the-can with her slippers on. Nightgown flapping. “They're trying to poison me!” She speaks with indignance. Not to warn those around her, but to validate a belief of her own. “They're trying to poison me.” She says again haughtily, ducking away with a younger woman's athleticism from the incoming nurse's attempt to grapple her. It's her wings. They make her agile.

“Shut up, Margaret!” Stanley yells next door. The volume on his radio spikes. Sports commentators whisper through the walls. Old, dead sports commentators, and a roaring dead sea of excited souls.

“I don't have an eating disorder.” They've told me I lost the weight on purpose so many times, I'm not even sure anymore. “My eating isn't disordered. I don't have any more body image issues than... than any other female. My eating isn't connected to a disorder. I'm broke, I'm in college full time, I'm working part time, I got sick, my medications affect my appetite—”

“Highly gifted people,” She raises her voice over me, “with perfectionist leanings are prone to isolation, insecurity, inadequacy—”

“—there's no grocery stores on or near campus, I don't have a car—”

“—especially teens, teens with high IQ's who have over-active minds, over-active cognition, who strive toward goals of delayed gratification, who can inhibit immediate rewards for longer term goals, who don't feel a sense of reward the way others do—”

“—the Zoloft dose they had me on was too high, they put me on that with Clonazepam, Wellbutrin, and _Adderall_ —”

“Someone like you, who downplays and dismisses how exceptional it is that she's lined up to graduate from college before she's even of age, who refuses to take a medical withdrawal because it'll put her behind—that's what we call perfectionism. People with eating disorders are perfectionists.”

“Would you really be trying this hard to make the diagnosis fit if I were a guy?” The smoke is choking me. My heart flutters. My vision clouds with black. “Would it still be that difficult to believe I worked hard and wore myself down to nothing?”

“Your mother,” She says pointedly, scribbling on her clipboard with averted eyes and some sort of high-pitched lump of bitterness in her throat, “called the nurse's station twelve times yesterday. She seems convinced that you're possessed by a demon—says she didn't know that Sister Rita would take you here instead of seeing to it that the proper rituals were performed.”

I lie back on my pillow. Might as well be comfortable. The sound of knuckles cracking, one by one, echoes down the hall like something very private and rude—almost pornographic. When I realize my busy hands are to blame, I press both palms on my thighs to bend all my fingers up and get them all over with at once. I remember the first time mom hit me, I was hunched over the kitchen table, filling in Eeyore and Owl in a coloring book with one hand, holding the other up and pulling my fingers down with my thumb to crack my knuckles one at a time. She slapped my hand so hard, it hit my face and turned bright red. _You're just like your father!_ Whatever that means. It meant crying, door-slamming, and more vodka drinking. For a while I thought it was because I used her Sennelier oil pastels as crayons, and maybe my dad didn't ask before he used her art stuff either. At least that's what I thought up until the next knuckle-cracking incident.

These are probably the kinds of things I should be talking about. Not what amounts of what I ate on what day for how much money that I got from where.

It's art therapy after lunch. Support net diagrams. You make a little mark for yourself in the center, then fill up the surrounding space with circles for all the people in your life. Those circles are connected to you with lines or dots or dashes depending on the type of relationships; with arrows going one way, or the other, or both ways, depending on how the support in that relationship goes.

She goes on. “Why would a fifteen year old file for emancipation? Is she the reason you didn't stick with the partial program? With your meal plan? Does she not feed you?”

My nearly blank page impresses no one—four circles, thin, dotted lines, arrows mostly going out. You're not even trying, Gabriele. Your mother doesn't support you? If you call planting weird witchcraft bags under my pillow and trying to get exorcisms performed on me support. What about your father? Who the hell knows where he is. Do your grandparents live close? Only about four thousand miles away, but I really don't remember much Romanian anymore 'cause my mom taught me Russian instead for spite. You must have some friends! Yeah, that circle there is him. He may or may not be small and furry and incapable of speech.

Then there's the one girl who has to individually explain to each new group member how every line of her illustration depicts the story of the two brothers and uncle and father and stepfather who all molested her (at different times), and how the dots that turn into dashes by the one brother's circle show that they've started to form a friendship now, but the one isolated circle off to the side means she'll never forgive or speak to the other brother ever again. _Wow. That's really depressing._ I've spent so little time interacting with other human beings, I get palpitations whenever I have to open my mouth, and then I just panic and words come out. I never seem to get the hang of it. What's okay to say, when you're supposed to lie or ignore something so you don't make someone tear up and turn to hostile rebuttals. _Isn't your only friend a cat?_ Touché.

“You're ignoring me, Gabriele.” Claudia tries not to show how aggravated it makes her when I'm indifferent. She goes tight-lipped. Black eyes. She'd rather if I cry, scream, attack her. Do something. I really just want them to come in with the needles to take my blood so she goes away. “They can take away your privileges if you don't cooperate.”

“My bathroom door is fucking locked.” My hands tremble. My guts jump into my chest and push the air out of my lungs into gusts of rage. I don't mean to, but I'm yelling. “Every time I pee, there's a nurse in the room with me.”

“It's necessary to ensure you don't engage in any purging behavior.”

“I wasn't hungry. The medications take away my appetite.” This is the most I can give her.

“You say that about every medication you try.”

“They're trying to poison me!” The old woman, Margaret, insists. Sharp, bony ankles flare outside my door. She kicks her garbage can into the nurse's station. A harmless but loud spectacle. Important to her.

The darkness pools Claudia's eyes. The hole in her chest gapes. I've insulted her. It widens, breathes in, sucks at the air around me to swallow me up. Wordlessly screaming inward. “If you can't stick with one of these pills, they're going to have to give you shock treatments. Do you want that?”

There's a knock at the door. She eases back.

“Here to collect the sample.” The technician's accent is almost musical. I'm glad it's not the Chinese guy from the first two times, or the white lady from yesterday. He wiggles the needle around while it's still inside, and she stuck me four times before she actually got a vein. _Such small veins!_ I don't understand how the concept that being in a cold hospital room keeps my veins from contracting could escape someone with training in human physiology.

“Well, come in, then!” Claudia screeches. “It's not like there's anything that needs _privacy_ going on in here!”

He just rolls the cart on in after him. “Can you spell your name for me, miss?” I think it's a West African accent. He has the kindest smile I've ever seen. Warmth radiates from it. Not a dry heat. Earthy and snug, like autumn campfires. Standing in the sun's rays on a windy day.

I spell it out, Gabriele Lupei. Claudia is seething. “Excellent.” The technician says, placing some stickers on the different colored vials. “And your date of birth?” Seven, two, eighty-seven. She's furious that I'm actually alert. That I'm not exhibiting traits of my illness by withdrawing from her, that I'm not unresponsive, catatonic, drooling.

“I'm making the recommendation to Dr. Bohn that you spend less time with these books and more time with people.” She takes her clipboard and her folder and stashes them both in her beige leather attache. “You've skipped more than half of the group sessions since you got here.”

Some hysterical, knee-buckling rage hits and I don't even know where my mind goes. I hug my knees, but it's like I'm plummeting down the hole to Wonderland and there's nothing to grab onto to break my fall. I don't know anything except that I'm frustrated and it feel like my chest is flying, soaring out of my body. Our eyes meet in passing. She jumps. Shocked, mouth gaping in horror. A vision of herself from another's eyes burns through her mind. It's such a cruel mirror for anyone to glimpse. It was an accident. She stares up at me, terrified. Then she flees the room.

Her red smoke follows her out. The technician feels it too once it's gone. I can tell.

He ties my arm off with some elastic. Swabs it, then rubs something between his hands. Gives the bandages on my wrists a second glance, but looks no more after that and says nothing of it.

“Thanks for interrupting.” I say, stretching my legs out on the bed. My toenails have gotten kind of grossly long, and I pull my legs back in again to sit with them folded instead.

He laughs, big and hearty. “Yes, well,” He's thinking how to say what he feels in a professional manner. That kind of detached tolerance of her must come from familiarity. “Your treatment is important, but...” It's a little disposable heating pad between his hands. He places it on the crook of my arm. “Blood is also.”

I don't know if I can handle more group sessions today. I'm tired of trying to make them happy, to show that I'm cooperative. The last session, the woman running it had definitely never experienced any of the things that anyone in the group had. She made us all talk about those experiences, though. Made us write down adjectives and adverbs to describe them. Tell our stories through colors. I refused, said it felt stupid. They dismissed me from the group for being discouraging to other patients.

The elastic band goes slack. When I look down, the needle is in my arm and the first vial is already half full. I didn't even notice. Disposable heating pads. Why hasn't anyone made this routine practice?

“You should not let life get you down. You are still so young. And clearly smart—philosophically minded, I see.” He says, glancing over at the books on my desk. The full vial clicks out of the IV and goes onto a little stand on the cart. He plugs in a new, empty one. “Kant, Liebmann, Lotze. Kant was possibly the smartest man to have lived. Do you agree?”

I'm so excited to meet someone else who's even heard of the Neo-Kantians, I'm beaming. I don't even feel the need to bring up the ethical flaws in the Categorical Imperative's absolutism—to say that lying is always wrong due to its universal impossibility, no matter what, even if the Nazis come to the door asking if you're hiding Anne Frank. I can't think of anything to say. I just nod my head because his smile and his kindness are so entrancing. Unlike anyone else here.

“Kant would say, it is your first duty to yourself to stay alive and well.” He switches out the last vial. Places it in the last empty slot on his cart, completing the rainbow of test samples. The needle comes out of my arm and that's the only time I really feel it. He takes something off the cart. A small, metal box. Pulls out a real bandage. A proper one, not a piece of tape with a cotton-ball underneath that wrinkles your skin and leaves all the glue residue behind that you have to press around the bruise to rub off. I don't know why, but I could tell him all of my secrets for this bandage, for his smile. “You get better soon. You put your mind to it, you study hard, you can be anything you want.”

I drift off when he leaves. Nap uncovered on the bed, as cozy as if I had my own blankets wrapped around me. Breathing in my own scent. Not the hospital sterilized old stale human stink. It doesn't even register in my nose. Not while I dream.  
 

 

 

S T A T E N  I S L A N D,  N Y 

E  R  I  K

Our house, the three-story suburban prison, rises over the hill before the inevitable descent, and then it's just looming there at the bottom in wait as we fall downhill. Its stone cottage walls and walnut roof peek over the small firs and the top of the willow tree out front, all casting short shadows over the yard. Dad keeps one hand on the wheel and the other on Mom's knee. A candy-red cardinal flies into the stained glass window set in the front door, like somebody shot it out of a cannon. Judging from the conversation and Drita's bowed head, I'm the only one that sees it. Mom's laughing now—talking about going to the store to pick up some prosciutto to cook with the chicken breasts defrosting on the counter—while Dad sings along with his music to remind everybody that, in another life without us, he could've been Sinatra. The bird had to be blind or something; the glass is all panelled and frosted, and there's a big diamond of mosaic pieces set in the middle, with big, paisley style flourishes coming out the sides, stretching down to about your waist. The bird just lays there by the morning paper, maybe dead, maybe stunned. All down the block, the papers are at the front steps, the lawns are manicured, and the neighbors are out watering their gardens and walking their dogs. Dad rolls us along the cul-de-sac up to our driveway, where the clunky garage door whirs up and the only thing we can do is go back to business as fuckin' usual.

Inside, the door grinds closed behind us, sealing off the fresh air and sun to gasoline and dark. Dad's parked us too close to Mom's Mercedes. Her door only opens about an inch. I don't try mine. The keys are already out of the ignition when she says, “I can't even get out!” He just grunts and waves her to climb through the driver's side once he's out. She gives a sigh, then asks, holding her purse in her lap, “How am I gonna drive to the store?”

“I gotta head back out anyways,” he says.

I'm last outta the car. Drita slams her door in my face. Then the Cadillac beeps locked. Up left, the door to the laundry room squeaks open. Everybody files inside. I hang behind in the trapped, stale heat of the car. Once the door closes behind them, I climb over into the front seat. Dad's got his Marb's stashed in the glove compartment. Five left. He'll notice, but whatever. Out in the garage, I check the usual spots for a loose lighter. His work station is still buried under with cracked picture frames, shattered porcelain angels, nuts, screws, the broken guest room lamp, and old pool toys. Nothing behind the toolbox.

I bolt out the side door for a quick detour to the front steps. Inside, dark shapes move around behind the frosted glass. When I scoop the bird up onto the unrolled newspaper—rubber band slid off it and up onto my wrist—its head moves around all heavy and loose on a broken neck. That's a dead fuckin' bird. Dead, cardinal red on top of the headline: _Morton Industries kill four_ , with the last word covered up by tail feathers. I cut through the grass and along the marble stepping stones to the backyard, curving the paper at the ends so the bird doesn't slip.

Out back by the pool, the long-handle lighter off the grill works as well as anything to fire up a cigarette. Insects buzz in the heat. A soft breeze picks up once in a while to break the stench of charcoal and gas with something sweet and earthy. I walk over to the pool's edge and stand there, paper still in hand, watching dead leaves float in the deep end. Next door, Mrs. Peressini kneels in the dirt, working in her garden with her green, floral smock and pink gloves full of dirt same as always. She gives me the stink eye through the weathered fence planks, fulfilling her daily chore to disapprove of and then diligently ignore us. The bitter taste of morning breath still hangs on since all plans for dental hygiene were derailed by my trip to the hospital ward. All because of a toothbrush. There's a joke in there somewhere. The smoke helps but I can still feel plaque on my teeth.

Maybe I get two, three drags off my cigarette before the glass door slides open and Mom steps outside. She's all full of smiles and fresh, red lipstick now with a nondescript drink in hand and her eyes deadened in a medicated haze. She comes up from behind to suffocate me with hugs, her hands clasping over my stomach. Some clouds pass overhead and Mrs. Peressini's garden fades gray. The grass, our pool, the whole world, it all turns blue and cold.

When Mom shimmies around to my side and sees the bird, she lets go of me, shrieking, “God! That's disgusting! They carry... _diseases!_ ”

“Was on the front steps,” I say.

The plan was to make the lap around the pool to toss the thing over the fence, out into the woods, but Mom's stiletto boots are as certain of the ground as a newborn calf. I drop the paper on the concrete so I can grab her arm tight. The bird bounces onto its back, head twisted face-down over a paragraph. It's not even noon and she's slurring, unable to control her tone of voice, smiling at nothing. She tries getting on her toes to lean up into my ear and whisper, “Your father's in the kitchen cheering he's psychic 'cause you're not inside yet,” like it's a funny joke.

“I'm supposed to smoke in the house or what?”

She takes the cigarette from my mouth. She drags on it, locking eyes with me. “He's been runnin' his mouth. You won't come home if you're not kicked out,” she reports, Brooklyn Diane Sawyer on quaaludes, venting smoke out the corner of her mouth. “You need to make an effort with him, Erik.”

“Fine.”

She passes the cigarette back to me. “Was this today?” she asks. Her hand cups the side of my face, stroking the bandage with her thumb.

“Been in a cell for months—maybe I just wanna see the sun for a little bit.”

Behind the fence, Mrs. Peressini clears her throat.

Mom shifts her weight. Her boot pins my toes. “Did that happen today?” she repeats, fumbling a little to plant her heel somewhere else, shuffling away from a precarious fall into the pool.

I grab her shoulders—reel her back in. “Jesus, Ma.” Under her makeup, new needle marks bruise her lips—fuller now than I remember. Her face is always a painted mask. Thick, lifelike paper mâché. Stiff and planted on, fixed in place. Emotion brims somewhere underneath, showing nowhere but her eyes.

Once she's steadied herself, her French manicured claws dig up the taped corners from the gauze and peel it off my face. “Oh my God,” she mumbles. The bandage drops to the concrete, right next to the cardinal. What's black and white and red all over? A newspaper with a dead cardinal and a fuckin' used bandage on it. I hear the doctor again, clipping thread from her needle with some tiny scissors, saying, keep it dry, change the gauze daily, wait until tomorrow to shower. Ibuprofin or Tylenol if you need it. Anything else? Some scars are lessons, she says. Right. I'll remember that next time I see a guy waving his toothbrush around.

Up in the sky, the clouds hang in place. Looks like more rain.

“He wants me to leave, I'll leave,” I say, “I don't give a shit.”

Mrs. Peressini gives one loud, deliberate cough.

Mom forces a smile. “It's not... that bad...” When she starts crying again, I toss the cigarette into the water. With one arm around her waist and the other holding her hand out like I'm here to lead the dance, I shepherd her away from the pool.

We go in through the deck door to the kitchen. Once she's on sure footing, clacking her way across the wood floor to the cabinets, I slide the glass door shut behind me. The smell of home hits like a cinderblock—like walls building up around me, closing in. Some indescribable mix of cooking spices, potpourri, laundry, and coffee—something you don't notice unless you've been gone long enough to forget it. The lights are all on, but I don't see Dad or Drita around. The ceiling fan whirs as it chops the air.

Mom fusses over the coffee maker—rinsing out the pot, tossing an old, wet filter from the morning, and pouring in heaps of new grounds. “It's lonely, kinda sad, makin' less coffee in the morning,” she says, dumping out way too much of dad's gourmet chocolate truffle blend. I sit at one of the stools outside the counter to watch her bounce around the kitchen—her pen—Mexican jumping bean style, all hopped up on martini and Adderall. Going mad, stuck in a gateless enclosure of sleek, black appliances and cherry wood floors and cabinets, carved out in the sea of white walls and carpet. “Your sister won't touch it, he's always making just enough for his thermos...” She pulls the nozzle over from the sink and sprays probably not enough water directly into the chamber, all high pressure and splashing mist hard at the cabinets as she stares out the high windows overlooking the yard. The wet bottom of the carafe sizzles when she sets it in place on the burner. After that, she slams two mugs down on the counter, then shoots across the kitchen to the fridge, repeating everything from the car, peeking absently over her shoulder for something now and then, “I got bucatini and pancetta, all these mushrooms still sitting in here—how d'you even know when they go bad?—already fungus—but prosciutto, I was thinking...”

“They get slimy,” I cut in.

She crouches down and pulls open the fridge drawers, foraging for dry-cured meats. “Maybe prosciutto with some fresh mozza... But I need toothpicks... to keep the cutlets rolled up.”

The coffee maker gives a few steamy huffs—deep breaths on an uphill trek—then starts a little trickling stream into the pot.

While she's busy talking to herself, I head upstairs. The newly vacuumed, white carpet folds over the steps. Up past the ascending row of obligatory Catholic iconography on the wall. Gotta have the Italian saints. Saint Cecilia, Saint Albina, Saint Cajetan. Angels everywhere. Michael the archangel stepping on Lucifer. Mary stepping on Lucifer the serpent. Everybody stepping on Lucifer, the family fuck up. Then up at the top of the steps, something new. My stint at Rikers is when they decide they need a professional family portrait done. Dad's in black and pinstripes. One of his perfectly pressed white shirts and a red tie to match Mom's dress. Mom is totally dazed, out of place, looking like a Hollywood pin-up on too much medication. Drita stands between them, reluctantly showing her braces. She's smiling but somewhere in her eyes you can tell she doesn't want her picture taken.

“Hey!” Dad shouts from the bottom of the stairs. He whistles and jingles his keys. “You come with me.”

“Let him rest!” Mom yells from the kitchen.

Dad grips the bannister, his head spinning back to Mom like the Exorcist. “He's been doin' nothing for two months!”

His wide, apathetic eyes come back my way. They're unmoved, even while he's screaming. When it comes to me, he's just got this frozen, perpetual glare. I hang back, holding onto the railing. The hall light from upstairs casts a glare on the photo of me holding up two-year-old Drita in uncle Tony's backyard, leaving me faceless. “Can I brush my fuckin' teeth?” I ask.

“You can suck on your fuckin' teeth when I knock 'em outta your head, you use that language in front of your mother.”

“Leave him the fuck alone!” Mom yells back.

“Car.” He points at me. “Five minutes.”

Up in the hallway, I'm halfway into the bathroom when I spot Drita through her cracked bedroom door, sulking on her bed with her oversized headphones—probably listening to the Stones—bent over homework or something. Her eyes are all puffy. I'm lingering there, knowing I should go say something, but then the bathroom mirror throws this naked, black stitched and jagged red slash back at me. I shut the door behind me. At this point, it's almost surprising to see my toothbrush still there. Ten seconds into brushing, I give up. My whole jaw aches. Opening my mouth, moving the brush under my cheek, spitting—it all makes the skin feel tight and sharp.

When I see my room cleaner than I left it, panic starts batting a thousand under my ribs. Bed folded, no clothes on the floor, empty laundry hamper by my door, closet wide open and organized, vacuum tracks in the carpet. I pull some books off my shelf. Behind Kerouac, Burroughs, and Ginsberg, the small, black box is still there with my pipe inside—half-smoked bowl intact and reeking like a skunk.

I open the window and take three hits in fast, coughing succession, blowing the smoke out through the screen. I fan the air with Big Sur, then stash the pipe again, still coughing.

§

 

When I open the door to the garage, the air-conditioning collides with this gasoline soaked heatwave, keeping me at bay there in the doorway. Dad waits in the car with the stereo up and the windows down. Over the stalling engine, Billy Joel plucks piano keys to wailing saxophone.

Before I can close the door behind me, Mom pops up at my side and hands off to me a mug overflowing with steaming hot coffee. It spills over the sides and burns my hand

Dad leans out the window. “He's not bringing that in the fuckin' car!”

“I don't—” I start, shoulders up and shaking my head to get point across without the words.

“You can't wait for him to drink the fuckin' coffee, let him bring it in the fuckin' car!”

She slams the door. Dad sails his head away in annoyed defeat, violently rolling his eyes.

I burn my tongue and hand trying to gulp down enough to make the mug stop spilling everywhere. I taste blood. I dab at my lip—nothing—and then at my cheek while I climb in through the passenger door. Watery, bright red leaking into the corner of my mouth. Before I can single-handedly get my seatbelt to click, he tosses something into my lap.

“The fuck is this?” he asks.

I pick it up—a small ziploc with white powder inside. My head spins a million miles an hour when we zoom out of the garage, down the driveway, and nearly into Mr. Sylvester crossing the sidewalk with Bugsy outside our house. Coffee splashes onto my pants when the brakes hit.

Dad pounds the horn. Even if I hold my breath, my pulse just goes and goes—jugular pumping, running in fear, waiting for him to fuckin' pounce.

I drop the bag in the center cupholder and take a calculated sip to stall. I answer, “Cocaine.”

“The fuck is it doin' in your room?” In the side mirror, Mr. Sylvester shakes his head and picks up his decrepit dog. He takes his time walking them both out of the way while Dad froths at the mouth, wringing his hands on the steering wheel, saying, “What kinda idiot kid am I raising, I find this shit in your room?” Again, he hits the horn.

Once the coast is clear, Dad grips the shoulder of my seat for a vantage point to watch as we speed backwards all the way outta the cul-de-sac and onto Todt Hill. Another gulp of coffee stops it from splashing everywhere. A break in the music hits with low, dampened piano notes. Twittering birds and rustling leaves fill the silence. The sun glares in through the windshield, dicing through the towering trees that canopy the road. I flip the visor down and say, “I'm selling it.”

“The fuck is wrong with you?” He looks ahead again, picks the bag out of the cupholder, and throws it back into my lap. “Doin' that shit! Keeping it in my house! This is why my blood pressure's through the roof!”

“Not doing it,” I say, “selling it.”

Without signaling, we veer forward onto Ocean Terrace and charge uphill through the forest of traffic. “Through the clouds, blowin' up like the Hindenburg!” he yells, doubletaking me to see if I've got the appropriate reaction or whatever. I push my tongue along the inside of my cheek, itching at the stitched surface from underneath. I listen, arms crossed, watching the road—one of us should at least watch. “'Cause you do stupid shit like this! What if your sister found it? What then? What if the cops come knocking on my goddamn door with a warrant, wanting to tear the place up? What d'you think's gonna happen then?”

The trees thin. Fast moving clouds dampen the sun, and in the cold morning light the road ahead, twisted on a hill, vanishes into nothing at the end. I almost catch myself before I start shouting, “Why would Drita rip apart my closet to break open a fuckin' lockbox inside a fuckin' shoebox inside a fuckin' plastic bin on a goddamn shelf she can't even reach?”

He leans over to me and hovers there, precariously guiding us along the road with the wheel at a blind angle until I look back at him. “Are you high right now?” he yells. I shake my head—more frustrated than denying it—and turn to watch as suburban mansions zoom past outside, giving way to modest roadside homes and apartments under a massive web of poles and wires. “He's high. At what—ten in the morning. You think about anything before you do it? Smokin' pot, snortin' shit up your nose. Who told you that was a good idea? Huh? Which idiot friend? Joey? That mental midget? Or one of the other hundred losers you hang around with?”

“Giuls.” I finally say.

“Giuliani Aceto told you to start doin' blow?” he carefully pronounces the name with skepticism injected into each syllable. This'll probably only take an entire trip to Manhattan and back.

“Sellin' blow.”

“That's the story you're goin' with?” He laughs. “This little personal-use nothing is locked up in your closet 'cause Giuls told you to sell it?”

“Yeah,” I say, getting more annoyed by the second, “he did.”

“Well, let's go ask him!” Here we go. “How's that? Let's go ask him. Maybe he'll help me break your nose. Make it a team effort.”

“Great.” I agree. Feels great to be caged again, only a few hours later—stuck in close quarters with some psycho and nowhere to go. “Let's ask him.”

“Oh, I'm askin' him. Then I gotta pick up the prosciutto—remind me. That don't come from my side of the family. That's your mother. Both of you. Jesus Christ. This tiny bag is supposed to make him money...”

“I sold the rest of it, so yeah. That's what's left.”

The road winds downhill and levels out along fenced, roadside homes. We take the fork right onto Milford, then keep going until Clove takes us to the highway.

“We're outta the projects,” he says, “got a million other people you could talk to. It's a nice goddamn neighborhood!”

I don't say what I'm thinking—that he hates every brownnosing yuppie snob in that fuckin' neighborhood, that Mom is the only reason we talk to any of them, that they all hate us—so we just listen to Billy Joel instead the rest of the way back down 278. You know he's pissed 'cause he doesn't sing a word the whole time. Piano Man in its entirety, all through 278, to 95, to 495, through tollbooths, finally to the Lincoln Tunnel. We rush underwater through the dark in dashes of eerie, yellow light, cool air, and uncomfortable silence as the stereo croons: _Captain Jack will get you high tonight! Take you to your special island..._

As the song crescendoes, we surface in Manhattan where towering buildings carve up the sky and cars blare their horns for no real reason. The stink of hot city smog fills the car, undercut by salt the further Dad speeds towards the water.

My stomach sinks like heavy stone when the twelve-story, gray brick building comes into view down at the corner where the street meets the boardwalk. It's more church than hotel, with its arched windows and iron-wrought gates squaring around the perimeter, closing off the mote of outside dining space where rich, white idiots scarf down Italian food with their families. Below the windows, in-between the black marble tables, the budding plants I remember now tower up to the awnings and spill over the edges of their fat, obsidian pots. The lanterns are already lit, hanging between each window and mounted on the iron fence posts. Overhead, scarlet awnings flap in the wind with gold, cursive letters rolling like a pirate's flag: The Shoreline Lounge.

He drives past and takes a sharp right around the corner to cut through the alley. In back, Richie's beamer is parked in Dad's spot next to Giuls, just offset of the lines and cutting into the third space over. We park next to him. “Today's the day,” Dad mutters to himself, pulling the keys from the ignition, “I kill that dumb prick.”

 

  
 

 

M A N H A T T A N,  N Y

D A N T E

“We didn't think you were comin' in!” that dumb prick says chewing on his cigar. He jumps up from his seat, gangly arms out, faking like he's excited. Tommy grunts and holds their table with both hands, eying up some jostled chess pieces. These idiots got one of the tables from the dining hall set up at the front desk. The black and white tile is all scuffed with black marks from where they dragged it.

“We? You take up two parking spaces, suddenly you're an army now?” I say. The front desk is empty with the office's _Employees Only_ door swinging on its hinges behind it. No receptionist, no hostess. At the hostess' end of the desk, there's a mug on its side. Some spilled coffee puddles all over some laminated menus and drips down to the floor. Up on the ceiling, the fuckin' chandelier's swaying. Crystal wedding cake layers in the wind. The light's moving round on the walls like campfire.

Richie gives that smug fuckin' smile and keeps walking with his goddamn boots squeaking. Filthy. Tracking dried mud across tile over onto the red rug where we're standing. He pulls Erik in for a hug, eyes goin' wide like his ass just got lit up by Old Sparky when he sees the kid's face. With his mess of black hair, he might as well have. Hungover junky trash back from the dead. “Me and Giuls heard this guy got out today!” He cheers and slaps Erik on the back, looking at me. “Figured you'd be takin' the day, celebratin'. You and Dee. Want me to move or something?” While his back's turned, Tommy's fat fingers swap a couple pieces on the board—all quick and shifty-eyed.

“No, you knuckleheads keep playin' checkers,” I say, watching the ceiling quake, “I got business.”

“Chess.” Erik's gotta say.

He's almost as tall as Richie now. Richie puts a fist under his chin and guides his head to the side for a closer look. “What happened, kid?” he asks.

“Some illiterate.” Now my son talks. Fuckin' kid comes alive. “Didn't like I was reading. Carved a shank outta his fuckin' toothbrush.”

“What's this shit?” I point at the chandelier. “We got elephants upstairs?”

Tommy just shrugs and sips his espresso.

Richie's arm wraps around Erik's shoulders. He pulls him in, twirling his cigar in Erik's face as he talks. “You teach this guy a fuckin' lesson?”

“It was during count. I blink and COs are on him.”

Yeah. COs.

It's an obstacle course walking around the desk. Stray luggage with foreign airline tags in another alphabet piles up into a pyramid behind the receptionist's station. When I push on the office door, it pushes back. Izzy comes stumbling through, full face of makeup, holding a fistful of paper towels to her heart in shock. “You scared the shit out of me!” she yelps, hand over her mouth a second later for swearing. “Sorry, Uncle Dante.”

I pull her in for a hug—a kiss of forgiveness on her forehead. “Hey, she's taller and more gorgeous everytime I see her!” I say. She twists her mouth into an embarrassed little smile and combs her black hair over one shoulder, brushing through the edges with her fingers. “Why's the goddamn ceiling bouncin' up and down, sweetheart?”

There's a metal ring through her bottom lip. I don't even ask. If it were my Drita, I'd tell her, that ring don't clip off, I'm putting a clip in you. Who the fuck knows where Giuls' head is. “Some kinda party in the ballroom,” she says, shaking her hair out behind her before she starts swabbing up the spilled coffee on the desk. “They're like, Russian or something... Investors... or something. Dad said let 'em do whatever.” His parenting philosophy's finally carried over to business.

“So they bring a trampoline and a team of fuckin' gymnasts upstairs?”

She shrugs. “I'm not supposed to go up there.”

Erik's looking over, practically waving at Izzy with his eyes while Richie's saying something to him about _fuckin' moolies._ Not so enamored with the dumb prick now, he tries to duck his way out from under Richie's arm, mumbling, “He was white...” The push for freedom prompts Richie to pull him into one of his military headlocks. Richie's bicep tattoo of an army-capped skull gritting a knife in its teeth between waving banners of _U.S.M.C._ and _Semper Fidelis_ presses into the back of Erik's bowing head.

Some goofy smile comes over Izzy's face.

“Where's your dad, hon?” I ask her.

“I think he's eating.”

§

Giuliani's carving up a bloody steak in his favorite corner booth where nobody can get the jump on him. The one with no windows where you can still see the front desk and the kitchen on the opposite side, right by the dark fuckin' medieval armoire with the lions and gargoyles carved into the wood and the dusty bottles inside. The red wine in his glass ripples with the shaking ceiling. Far as I can tell, his head's down the whole time, but from the vantage point there he must see me crossing the dining room at some point. Without looking up, he just says, “What?”

I could right about choke the fat bastard. I throw the bag down on the table. “Why's my kid say he's got this shit in my house 'cause of you?”

Not even a glance away from his steak. “You askin' me about this here?” he says, mopping up some sauce with a chunk of meat.

I slide into the booth and fold my hands over the table. “I was hoping for something simple like an _I dunno_ ,” I say, “Then I'd be on my merry way breaking his nose.”

Once he's got another mouthful of steak, his eyes leer up at me. He washes it down with wine. “How is he?” he asks, uncommitted, maybe even bored. “Outta Rikers today, right?”

“His smart mouth plus a bunch of gangbangers who can't read See Dick Run—” I sigh. “He looks like a fuckin' Bond villain is how he is.”

“Eye?”

I mime a finger cutting from my ear to my mouth.

He shakes his head. “Leave his nose alone,” he says, pulling the napkin from his lap and throwing it over his plate.

 

 


End file.
